The present invention relates to fillers such as might be used to stuff soft purses, backpacks, and similar items, especially for purposes of displaying such items for sale.
It is often desirable to display soft purses, soft suitcases, backpacks, and similar items, at the point of sale to the ultimate consumer with the item filled, or stuffed, with paper, tissue, or similar materials. The stuffed item thus appears to the consumer approximately as it would when the item is in actual use, makes the item more attractive and generally facilitates the consumer's decision to purchase the item.
Some manufacturers of certain such items normally stuff the items at the factory and ship the stuffed items to the wholesalers who, in turn, transport the items to the retail outlets.
However, in many cases, especially when the cost of transportation is a significant fraction of the total cost of the item, it is typically easiest and cheapest to ship the item to the retail outlet while the item is flat. In this way the shipping costs, which are typically strongly tied to the volume of the shipment, are significantly reduced and the chances of damaging the item in transit are greatly reduced. The disadvantage of shipping an item flat is that once the flat item arrives at the retail outlet, the retailer must spend precious time stuffing the item, usually with suitable paper, which must be provided by the retailer. The task is generally an unappealing one and the stuffed item is not always filled in such a way that the item is displayed to best advantage.
There is thus a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, a filler device for items which need to be stuffed, which would be inexpensive, would be mostly an empty structure so as to reduce the materials required, would have the ability of lying flat so that it could readily be shipped along with, or in, a flat item, and would be very easily and automatically deployed, requiring very little effort on the part of the retailer to stuff the item to the proper dimensions.